Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a three-dimensional printer.
Description of Related Art
Rapid prototyping (RP) technology is a next industry-focused technology after the CNC machining technology. The RP technology can rapidly produce a prototype in view of a three-dimensional (3D) object model of computer-aided design (CAD) by using a 3D printing mechanism at less expensive cost. The principle of the RP technology is first to divide the 3D object model of CAD into multiple slices, and, after the slices of the 3D object model is processed and transformed to the sectional configuration information, the object to be formed is stacked layer-by-layer by the 3D printing mechanism based on the sectional configuration information with no aid of any instruments. Therefore, the RP technology has great potential.
A typical printing head structure of a three-dimensional printer mainly includes a feed inlet, a feed motor, a guide tube, a heating element, and a nozzle. Most of these parts are made of thermoplastic molding materials. The raw materials for molding that are solid at room temperature are pushed into the heating element via the guide tube by the feed motor, and the solid raw materials are melt by the heating element and then are gradually stacked into a 3D object by the nozzle.
In general, when carrying out the 3D printing, the scale in the vertical direction is even more important than that in the horizontal direction. However, concerning the conventional 3D printers for either Cartesian structures (with the nozzle moving in the X and Y axes and the working platform moving in the Z axis) or parallel arm structures (mapping the XYZ coordinates to three moving shafts perpendicular to each other by trigonometric functions), they usually require large z-directional dimensions (i.e., machine heights), but exhibit relatively small effective print heights. Further, the conventional three-dimensional printers have no way to go beyond the height limitations of the machine heights in the 3D printing.